Haven't Thought Of You Lately At All
by Asylum94
Summary: Epilogue to "We Used to be Friends". What happened after Logan found Veronica, and Veronica's father shot her stalker? Did Logan survive, or did he sacrifice his life to save her? Is Mavis gone forever? Will Veronica recover from the trauma?


**A/N: This is an epilogue to We Used to be Friends. If you didn't read that one, this isn't going to make much sense. Enjoy, and please review!**

Darkness. All I could see was darkness. It enveloped me, clouding my eyes and even my brain. I looked around wildly for some light, some hope, some release. But there was nothing except the blackness surrounding me.

Suddenly, a faint light flipped on in the distance. It was the only thing I could see for miles. I ran toward it, not caring if it was friendly or dangerous, just needing an escape from the pitch black. As I got closer, I realized there was a figure lying spread-eagled on the ground, illuminated by the tiny circle of light. Getting closer still, I could make out the pool of blood that was forming around the figure. At this, fear gripped my chest and constricted it, but I ventured closer still.

I finally got close enough to step into the tiny pool of light, but what I saw there made me want to return to the deepest, darkest blackness. Logan's unmoving eyes stared morbidly up at me, blood pouring from their corners. Protruding from his chest was a long sliver blade that I'd recognized as Mavis's. I hurried to Logan's side and dislodged the knife, but blood spurted from the wound and added to the pool saturating the ground around him.

Screaming, I jumped back in terror. Suddenly, light began illuminating everything around me. I tore my eyes away from Logan's gruesome corpse to see an ocean of blood surrounding me. I was standing on the only bit of land for miles and miles with Logan's dead body next to me. I became hysterical. I looked down into the ocean of blood, and what I saw there turned my stomach. My father's face floated up from the depths and stared accusingly into my eyes. I turned away from him, only to see my mother's face float to the surface and fix me with the same accusatory stare. I tried to escape, but the faces of Wallace, Duncan, Lily, Meg, and even Weevil swam up before my eyes to taunt me.

All the while, Logan's body continued spurting blood. So much blood. The red ocean began to rise; it covered my feet, my ankles, my knees, my waist. I was surrounded by blood and death, and there was no escape. The ocean finally rose up to overtake my nose and mouth-

I jolted awake and took a deep, ragged breath. My lungs felt like they hadn't had air in years. Sweat dripped from the back of my neck and tickled my spine.

I slowly calmed my breathing and my frantically beating heart, and assured myself that it was nothing but a nightmare.

I looked at the clock above my head: 3:07 a.m. Rolling over on my couch, I stared sleepily at the ceiling, my mind still filled with the blood red images of my nightmare. The couch was my dwelling tonight because, after my father, Logan and I had finally left the hospital and returned home, I had insisted that Logan take my bed. He'd been through so much.

Honestly, the whole night is mostly a blur to me now, but the important thing is that Logan made it through alive (albeit with several cracked ribs and a lot of pain meds). Because Logan's father was still on his business trip and "couldn't get out of his meetings", I had been ready to beg my father on my hands and knees to allow Logan to stay with us until he was healed. Turns out the begging was unnecessary; Dad was so grateful to Logan for basically saving my life that he was ready to drive him back to our home as soon as he was released from the hospital.

Thinking about Logan now made it difficult to give in to sleep. I grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and quietly opened the door to my room where Logan was resting.

A sliver of moonlight illuminated his peaceful, sleeping eyes. I smiled down at him from my doorway, thinking of how much he deserved a long nights sleep after the stressful night he'd had. As I was backing out of the room and slowly closing the door, I heard a faint whisper.

"Veronica?"

I stuck my head back through the door. "Hey," I greeted with a smile. "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't. It's hard to sleep with this back brace on." Logan fidgeted in his cast.

"I'm sorry," I apologized again. "Is there anything I can do? Do you need anything…?"

"Um, water would be great. Saving your life really parches a guy." He smiled that cocky smile that I had learned to love. I revealed the water bottle in my hand from behind the door. We both chuckled as I knelt beside the bed.

I ran my fingers through his hair as he took a gulp and grimaced. "Are you in pain?" I asked tentatively. I glanced at the orange pill bottle on my nightstand.

"Not so much, now that you're here." He smiled weakly at me. Somehow, that smile made me feel more guilty than comforted. He scooted over (slowly, and with many painful groans), and gestured for me to get in bed with him. I glanced back towards the door. If my father found us in the same bed together, he might have an aneurism, and I didn't want to take advantage of him after everything he had been doing for Logan.

But I looked back at Logan, and his pleading eyes convinced me to stay.

I silently wiggled in under the covers next to him, and he held me tightly against his side. "Veronica, I don't think I was able to say thank you for all of this-"

"Thank you?" I said incredulously. His unwarranted gratitude sent me over the edge. "For what? For believing that Mavis was a good person? For not listening to you when you warned me to stay away from him? For letting him convince me that he was innocent? For forcing you to believe I didn't love you?" My voice broke. "For causing this," I gestured to toward his injured body, "to happen to you? Logan, you should be saying 'how could you', not 'thank you!'" Logan swiped a tear from my cheek and, to my surprise, chuckled. "Veronica, if I knew thanking you for your hospitality was going to bring you to tears, I would have refrained." He sighed. "None of this is your fault, V. You can't blame yourself for any of this, and I hate that you do."

"How can I not?" I whispered while more tears escaped from my eyes. "You were protecting me in a situation I had gotten _myself _into, that I was stupid enough to fall into, and look where its landed you. I just can't help but think about what could have happened if my dad had shown up even a second later…" I sniffed loudly. Logan didn't say anything for a while, just rocked me while I cried myself out.

When I was a little more coherent, he gently touched my cheek and directed my face to look up at his. "Listen to me, okay? This is his fault, not yours. He did this to me, but he's dead now. Your father made sure of that. You can't let the possibility of what could have happened haunt your mind. Veronica, if this happened all over again, I wouldn't have done anything differently. I would have protected you until he killed me," my breath caught, "but it didn't happen that way. I'm not dead, and I'm going to heal from this."

"I know you are," I smiled up at him. "I'm going to make sure of it."

"But Veronica," he looked down at me carefully. "This plague inside your mind of images of what could have been…That's not going to heal on its own. _You _have to heal it. You can't let him take over your mind and keep hurting you. He's gone, it's over, and everything is going to be fine."

I took a deep, steadying breath, breathing in his words, and I knew that he was right: everything was going to be fine.


End file.
